The Worst Super Bowl Ad – The Board – Editorials – Opinion – New York Times Blog

My vote for the most repellent Super Bowl commercial wasn’t the disgorged heart on the keyboard, the vomiting baby, or the fat guy with the jumper cables on his nipples. It was an ad for Salesgenie.com — the one with the cartoon panda at Ling Ling’s Bamboo Furniture Shack, talking with a singsong Chinese accent lifted from a World War II movie or “Gilligan’s Island” episode. Just about as obnoxious was the company’s other ad, featuring Ramesh, a hapless widget salesman with seven kids and an Indian accent as thick as Gunga Din’s.

I’m sure some will dismiss my irritation as a predictable complaint from a thin-skinned Asian-American speed-dialing the P.C. police. I don’t care. This country has a lot to answer for in its mockery and abuse of immigrants and other outsiders, and it never looks more stupid than when it harks back to the time when broad ethnic stereotyping was a source of endless amusement within the dominant white culture.

We Tivoed the Superbowl just for the ads. Never again. With the exception of the FedEx pigeon ad, they were all as imbecilic and offensive as football itself. The Planters Peanut commercial (mentioned in comment 6 to the article) was simply despicable. But, as another comment notes, I guess the advertisers know their audience.

Leni who? See here.